This Psalm rehearses the various virtues of the word of God, and the saints’ delight and profit therein. Any believer may generally use it as the breathing of his own soul; but in its full prophetic character, it would seem that it will be the language of the true Israel on their return to God and His long neglected oracles.
When the Lord came, He found the Jews neglectful and ignorant of the Scripture (Matt. 15:6; 22:296And honor not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. (Matthew 15:6)
29Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. (Matthew 22:29); John 5:38,4738And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. (John 5:38)
47But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? (John 5:47)). But the Remnant are directed to them (Isa. 8:2020To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:20); Mal. 4:44Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. (Malachi 4:4)). And this Psalm shows their obedience to that direction, and the exercise of their heart in the divine writings. They have forsaken their own traditions and are hearing “Moses and the Prophets” (Luke 16:29-3129Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. 30And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. 31And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. (Luke 16:29‑31)).
Ezra, while captive in Babylon, did, as the Remnant will do, diligently occupy himself in the word of God (Ezra 7:66This Ezra went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given: and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him. (Ezra 7:6)). The Berean Jews present a sample of them, likewise, in this character (Acts 17:1111These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (Acts 17:11)). And the history of Josiah does the same. He reigned after judgment had been pronounced against Jerusalem. His repentance could not change that. Judgment was still to come; but Josiah shall (like God’s Remnant) be spared. For he had set his heart to serve the Lord when all was hastening to ruin. But we have in the history this further fact—that in the midst of his doings and services, the Book of the Law is found, and that at once operates to give a new tone to all his ways. He begins with himself. He takes the place of a convicted and humbled one. In that spirit he sets himself to work again, and makes the oracles of God the rule of all his service (2 Kings 22:23; 2 Chron. 34; 2 Chron. 35).
Josiah, in this way, with zeal returned to the word of God which had been so entirely lost to the nation through their idol-vanities. And so, in the latter day, the repentant Remnant will turn with listening and obedient hearts to the word of God, and treat it with special honor and regard, conscious as they will be of having so long and grievously neglected it. For such is the fruit which repentance would duly and naturally yield. It will be restitution; restoring, like Zacchaeus, fourfold to that which they had wronged.
But we cannot pass by this valuable and deeply devotional Psalm without a little further pause. From the beginning of His ways, we see God’s value for His written word. He has made a hedge about it, that no rude hand can guiltlessly touch it, either to add thereto, or take therefrom. And He has bound it round the heart, before the eyes, and on the hands of His people. The gates of the field, the doors of the house, the morning and the evening family, the walk abroad and the rest within, all was to witness it (Deut. 6; Deut. 11). It was to mingle itself with all the personal and social life of His people, and shed its light on every path, however ordinary, of their daily journey. Is it not blessed to see the Lord thus esteeming His own revelation and thus commending it to our esteem? And is it now to be erased from our gates and doors and from the palms of our hands? “The malice of Satan has raged no less against the Book than the truth contained in it.” The divine life of the saint heeds it, and cannot spare any of it. It is the food of the life of faith and hope. It bears the soul to God, and keeps it near Him and with Him, through the Spirit. The more the virtues and consolations of the new life are prized, so will the word be. And the believer pleads the word or scripture as the answer to that great question, “Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?” (Job 28:1212But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? (Job 28:12)). For He who alone knows the path of wisdom has made scripture its dwelling place. And with Him (Jer. 23:2828The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. (Jeremiah 23:28)) the saint says of all in comparison, “What is the chaff to the wheat?”
May we hold it fast, but use it skillfully in the light of the Holy Ghost in us! For if there be the error of taking away this key of knowledge (Luke 11), so is there the error of using it with an untaught, unstable hand (2 Peter 3). Let us use it with the reverent and worshipping mind of the servant of God in this beautiful and most precious Psalm. Let us know something of the burnings of his heart over the holy oracles, saying, “I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for thy commandments.”
Psalms 120-134 are entitled “Songs of Degrees.” It has been judged that they were put together, and received a common title, because they were used on some occasion, or concerned some action, in different stages of it—such as the return of the captives from Babylon to Jerusalem. And from internal marks, this may well be so. Though indited by the Spirit at different times, they were used, in all probability, in the order in which they here appear, by those returning captives, at different stages of their march homeward—as the various parts of Psalm 68 were sung at different stations of that procession, which was bearing the Ark to the city of David. For in these Psalms we shall find a growing sense of drawing nearer and nearer to home or the place of rest till at last that place is reached with praise.
The coming forth from Babylon is anticipatively celebrated by Prophets, in very lofty language (Isa. 48:20; 52:11-1220Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say ye, The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob. (Isaiah 48:20)
11Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord. 12For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight: for the Lord will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your rereward. (Isaiah 52:11‑12)). But deliverance from Babylon is spoken of, after the captivity had returned from thence in the days of Cyrus (Zech. 2:6-76Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north, saith the Lord: for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the Lord. 7Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon. (Zechariah 2:6‑7)). So that the return at that time was, as a type, the pledge of Israel’s return from another, that is, their present dispersion; and these Psalms may answer to the utterances of the latter day Remnant, in passing through different stages of their trials, till brought into the rest of the kingdom. And they may suitably, in spirit, under certain conditions and experiences, be the utterance of any saint journeying on through the present world to the glory and presence of the Lord—a wayfaring man with Jesus.
But I might further observe that they were probably sung by the returning captives, for with Zerubbabel 200 singers are mentioned, and others also with Ezra, on their respective exodus from Babylon (See Ezra 2:64-65; 7:764The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore, 65Beside their servants and their maids, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty and seven: and there were among them two hundred singing men and singing women. (Ezra 2:64‑65)
7And there went up some of the children of Israel, and of the priests, and the Levites, and the singers, and the porters, and the Nethinims, unto Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king. (Ezra 7:7)). And after such a happy pattern we, in spirit, should sing, on the journey from Babylon to Jerusalem—from man’s city to God’s city—from this present evil world to the world to come. The one we have in our calling left, the other we are reaching. And the sense of this should put a song in our hearts. But we should still be only “on the way,” unsatisfied with all short of Jerusalem. Wells of water and songs of gladness cannot make the place of our journey our home. Gideon’s chosen 300 express this. Refreshment had no power to stop them on the road. They took it only for the sake of the journey, or as a journeying people ought to take it. They lapped the water as a traveling dog laps it, and did not kneel down to it, as though they were addicting themselves to it.
And this is to be our mind. We are saved in hope; and even the Holy Ghost, the due spring of all consolations by the way, dwells in us to give strength and not check to the hope (Rom. 15:1313Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. (Romans 15:13)); for His presence is not our Jerusalem, His refreshings are not the supper of the Lamb.
These Psalms, in the Syriac, are called “Songs of ascent from Babylon.” This is according to the view we have taken of them here. And the same Hebrew word, it has been noticed, is used in reference to the journey or ascent of the captives from Babylon to Jerusalem, as is used to express the title of these Psalms (Ezra 7:99For upon the first day of the first month began he to go up from Babylon, and on the first day of the fifth month came he to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God upon him. (Ezra 7:9)). This is still more confirming.
We would now mark each of them a little more particularly.